It might be cynical to suggest that Time magazine’s naming Taylor Swift as its ‘person of the year’ was a smart marketing ploy… or a way of securing an interview that was otherwise unobtainable.

Not that we’d suggest such a thing!

But whatever, Time’s print edition stands to benefit from bonus sales from not one, but three ‘Tay-Tay’ covers this month, one in which she is “wearing” a cat.

Time’s bonus market is the millions of loyal and adoring fans she has carefully developed – as country stars still do – with time spent and copybook customer service. In Australia, that attention has already been repaid with more than a million fans chasing half as many tickets… and the concerts are not until next year.

We’ve been writing about Taylor Swift at GXpress for years, ever since Straits Times digital editor Eugene Leow channelled her at WAN-Ifra’s Digital Media Asia event in Hong Kong in 2015. We’ve also written about Gannett’s appointment of a ‘Taylor Swift reporter’, now named as Arizona journalist Bryan West.

Others of course, also know a good thing when they see one: In Australia, Nova Entertainment has launched a 24/7 Taylor Swift radio station ahead of her tour, while News Corp’s inhouse content agency Suddenly has just launched a “fully unofficial” 100-page “magazine” about all things Taylor that it hopes will become a collectors’ edition. Suddenly director Fiona Welsh says part of the pitch will be to address fans who missed out on getting a ticket.

And of course, there’s the concert film to stream, exclusively (in ANZ) from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

Last week, under the headline, Does Time magazine still matter, the now twice-monthly print magazine’s Tom Jones explained the entirely reasonable rationale of choosing Swift over, for example, Vladimir Putin or Elon Musk.

And yes, about the interview they got, covering everything from her early career to the sale of her back catalogue, NFL boyfriend Travis Kelce, and the upcoming three-hour concert with its illusion, pyrotechnics and 16 costume changes. Sounds like value for her still-growing fanbase, for whose benefit she trained and trained, so she “could be silly” with them without fear of losing her train of thought.

“No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well,” Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote.

Or media, it seems.

Peter Coleman